When Tamara Rojo took over English National Ballet last summer, she vowed to make it Britain's "best loved and most creative company". Last month she put an image to that statement, commissioning a rebrand that's a world away from the old tutu-and-tights iconography. The new logo is bright, brisk and abstract; the photographs on the website and posters have been styled with provocative, even decadent extravagance.

These dancers look like 21st-century Bright Young Things, dressed by Vivienne Westwood in postmodern evening-wear. Sexy, sophisticated and a little bit feral, there's something of the vampire about them, contradictions underlined in the accompanying captions: "Pretty, intense"; "Looks like a doll and dances like a demon".

Reactions to Rojo's campaign have been wildly mixed, with some applauding its boldness and others criticising its imagery: is it really OK to refer to female dancers as dolls, even in the context of a cute paradox?

But a branding image that offends no one is likely to border on the invisible, and the controversy has been good for Rojo. Dance needs all the help it can get in shaking up popular prejudices. There is a tendency to dismiss all ballet as elitist fluff, and to mock contemporary choreography as esoteric and daffy. Campaigns like these are a first step in image management. National Dance Company Wales acquired a whole new gravitas when it shed its original name, Diversions, in 2009. Meanwhile, the Royal Opera House is strategising hard to shed its members' club image, replacing its (actually rather stylish) front-of-house uniforms for Marks & Spencer suits, and pouring resources into its social-media profile.

Ultimately, of course, it's the work that counts. The nights I sense a real change in the ROH audience are always when something electric is happening on stage – when Wayne McGregor or Liam Scarlett are bringing in a very different crowd. And so it will be with ENB. A rebrand was necessary – but I'm far more excited to see how Rojo will back this up with dancing.